Triliteral Root of the Day

Flour. The Triliteral Root of the Day from OCABS, in Hebrew and Arabic, with passages from the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qurʾan.

Show Notes

ק-מ-ח (qof–mem–ḥet) / ق–م–ح (qāf–mīm–ḥāʾ)

Flour

In the Hebrew Bible: qemaḥ, flour

In the Qurʾan: muqmaḥ, heads raised up

Sound-law correspondence and an explicit cognate link. Each radical answers its like, letter for letter; no shift is needed.

Passages

  • 2 Samuel 17:28: brought beds, basins, earthen vessels, wheat, barley, meal, parched grain, beans, lentils, roasted grain,
  • 1 Samuel 28:24: The woman had a fattened calf in the house. She hurried and killed it; and she took flour, and kneaded it, and baked unleavened bread of it.
  • Isaiah 47:2: Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove your veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
  • Luke 13:21: It is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”
  • Sūrat Yā Sīn سورة يس “Ya Sin” 36:8: Lo! We have put on their necks carcans reaching unto the chins, so that they are made stiff-necked.

The whole card on ocabs.org · The Consolation of Consonants

Opening music: Touchia Ḥijāz, Thami Ben Abdelkrim, violin, with percussion (Morocco, 1920s), public domain. Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF, Archives de la Parole.

What is Triliteral Root of the Day?

Every day, one Semitic triliteral root heard in three scriptures: the root in Hebrew and Arabic, how it functions, and a passage from the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qurʾan, read in the original languages with the English. Two or three minutes a day, from OCABS on the Ephesus School Network.